Numerous governmental rules and regulations have been created to protect consumers from receiving random calls from telemarketers, debt collecting companies or creditors. For example, debt collectors are typically limited to calling during a certain time period of a consumer's business day (e.g., business hours—9:00 am to 5 pm). Also, consumers are able to register and list their phone numbers on a “Do Not Call” list, which supposedly alerts telemarketers of the telephone numbers that they are not allowed to call. Despite the many rules and mechanisms that have been established to protect consumers from the onslaught of telephone calls daily, many consumers are still being annoyed by these calls.
A common technique used by consumers and many others who receive many annoying phone calls throughout each day is to screen the calls with answering machines. A consumer does not answer a phone call, but intentionally allows a connected answering machine to answer the call. After a few rings, the answering machine will answer the call with a brief message asking the calling party to leave a message. The person being called can then hear the message and, in many cases, is able to determine the identity of the caller. The consumer can then decide to answer the call or not. While this approach may be effective, it does not resolve annoyance and interruption of the consumer throughout the day. Even though the consumer is able to effectively screen out and not answer unwanted calls, he/she does so at the expense of being disturbed throughout the day by these types of phone calls
Many of these calls are automatically performed by a computer that dials phone numbers automatically and upon getting a response from a called party, start to broadcast a previously recorded message to advertise a product, a service or to leave a message regarding some type of loan or payment on which the called party has defaulted. Creditors, and telemarketers are able to make much more of these types of phone calls using this method and thus many consumers are being bombarded with such calls. In many cases a consumer's answering machine can become full relatively quickly on any given day; this is a problem as the consumer may be unable to receive important messages.
Moreover, a consumer has no recourse to complain or register his/her displeasure at the time of the call; this is because the calling party is actually a machine and not a human to whom one can convey his/her objections at the time of the call. These automated calls are most problematic because it is hard to trace them and identify the entity responsible for such calls. Often the parties on whose behalf the calls are made rely on third or even fourth parties to make these calls. A consumer who reports these calls to the authorities soon realizes that it is quite easy for the calling party to change their phone numbers and continue to make such calls, which can at best be characterized as annoying and at worst as harassing.